Death Dream

by Ben Bova

  Victoria watched Dan as he walked beside her, thinking, the photo in his file doesn't do him any justice at all. He's not handsome, exactly, but by God is he attractive! That soft bedroomy voice, like a purr. She smiled to herself and noted the way he moved through the corridors. He prowls like a cat, up on the balls of his feet as if he's ready to pounce. Or run away.

  Dan noticed that the corridors were paneled and carpeted. Everything cool and quiet. Reproductions of fine paintings and prints hung on the walls. But as Vickie led him deeper into the building, the wood paneling ended and the plasterboard hallways were painted a flat pastel yellow. The floors were covered with vinyl tile here, scuffed and scratched. The corridors were wide enough to trundle sizeable equipment through.

  "Mostly offices for the technical staff in this area," Vickie said.

  Dan heard voices yammering, a radio playing golden oldies, two men obviously arguing behind a closed door. It even smelled differently from the quietly efficient business section. Engineers and programmers worked here; he could feel the heat of conception.

  "Where are the labs?" he asked.

  "Toward the rear of the building," said Vickie.

  The pictures on these corridor walls were mostly group photographs of people Dan did not recognize. A few bulletin boards scattered about with the usual clutch of notices tacked to them. Some posters proclaiming everything from Earth Day to rock concerts. Vickie pointed out the cafeteria, silent and empty, its stainless steel counters gleaming spotlessly.

  "Lavatories at the end of that hall," she said. "And down here is the Pit—the computer center."

  Dan looked through the wide windows of the computer center and saw several big mainframes lined up against the walls. He could sense them humming away.

  "Those are Crays," he said, feeling almost awed.

  Vickie took him around a corner, then stopped in front of an unmarked door.

  "And this," she announced with a dramatic flourish, "is your very own office."

  Dan opened the door and stuck his head in. A bare desk, a couple of chairs, empty bookshelves. It would do.

  "It has a window," Vickie pointed out.

  Dan nodded absently. "Where's Jace's office?"

  She seemed momentarily disappointed, but then she pointed, "Around the corner, there." Dan noticed that her fingernails were lacquered gold.

  Feeling a sudden eagerness, Dan headed down the corridor without waiting for Vickie to guide him.

  "He's never there," said Vickie, trailing behind him. "He's almost always in his lab. Or in Wonderland."

  "Wonderland?"

  "The VR simulations chamber."

  "Where's that?"

  "I'll show you," she said.

  Dan stepped aside to let her lead the way again, impatient to get to his old friend, to start his new job, to sink his teeth into the work he had come here to do.

  "That's his office," Vickie commented as they passed a closed door marked J. LOWREY. Dan saw that Jace had placed a hand-lettered sign beneath his nameplate: Do Not Enter! High Hazard Area! Creative Work Underway! He grinned, remembering the nuclear radiation sign that Jace had pilfered from one of the other Wright-Patterson labs and plastered on his office door in Dayton.

  Vickie stopped in front of a blank door. This one was metal, rather than wood. A red light blinked over the doorframe. Dan noticed a small printed sign beneath it: Do not enter when red tight is on. Simulation in progress. Someone had pasted other signs beside the door:

  Welcome to the Emerald City

  Down the rabbit hole.

  Abandon all hope, Ye who enter here.

  Vickie tapped at the door with the back of her knuckles. The door swung outward a crack and a suspicious-faced technician peeked out at them. He was young but obese, his skin waxy and his face pimpled from junk food.

  "This is Damon Santorini," said Vickie before the guy could say a word. "He's going to be working with Jace."

  The technician grunted and pushed the door open a bit more.

  "I'll leave you here," Vickie told Dan with an almost sly smile on her lips. "This is your territory now. I'm going back to my neck of the woods."

  "Uh, thanks for everything," Dan said to her retreating back. Then he slipped through the partially open doorway.

  The control room was small, dark, cramped and hot. Just like the ones at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base that Dan was accustomed to. It smelled of fried circuit boards and old pizzas. Two technicians were seated at consoles with their backs to him, facing a square window of one-way glass. Neither of them acknowledged Dan's presence in any way at all. They were hunched over their consoles, studying the display screens that flickered in the shadows.

  The third tech, the heavyset one who had opened the door for Dan, pulled it shut and took the only other chair in the narrow, sweaty chamber.

  It was close and steamy in the dimly-lit control booth. Dan wormed his arms out of his jacket. There was no place to put it, so he folded it over one arm. Pulling his tie loose and unbuttoning his collar, Dan leaned in between the other two technicians seated at their consoles and peered through the tinted window. Beyond the one-way glass stood his friend, his colleague and partner, Jason Lowrey.

  The room in which Lowrey stood was spacious, although its ceiling was almost oppressively low. The chamber was utterly empty: walls totally blank, not a stick of furniture, floor bare gray vinyl tile. Jace was crouched slightly, hands on knees, as if winded from exertion. He wore a heavy-looking bulbous black helmet with a darkened visor pulled down over his face. Metallic gloves on both hands. Barely-visible wires trailed from the helmet and gloves toward the window where Dan was watching.

  "What's he doing in there?" Dan asked in a whisper.

  One of the young men at the consoles glanced up at him. "Baseball," he said.

  Jace straightened up and started running backward. Dan saw that he was on a treadmill. Jace reached up with his right hand and clutched at something invisible. Then he grabbed it with his left and threw it with a sweeping overhand motion.

  "How long's he going to be in there?" Dan asked.

  The technician looked up at him again. He looked like an Asian-American and he seemed very young to Dan. He made a tight smile. "Who knows? He might decide to play the whole World Series."

  Dan nodded ruefully. That was Jace, all right. He did things his own way and everybody else had to wait on him.

  After several minutes of watching a pantomime of baseball, though, Dan grew impatient. "Can't you call him out of there?"

  "Not me!" said the Asian. "He doesn't like being disturbed."

  "Then let me." Dan reached for the microphone on the console.

  "I've got a better idea," said the young man. He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. "Let me show you some of the other things going on around here. Jace will let us know when he's ready to see you."

  The executive offices of ParaReality were in the front of the single-story yellow brick building, where their long windows faced the carefully-nurtured lawn of Bermuda grass and the nodding palms and flowering hibiscus bushes that bordered the nearly-empty parking lot.

  Kyle Muncrief had prevailed upon United Telephone of Florida to construct a video conference center in his building for the private use of ParaReality Inc. He had it installed in a windowless interior room next to his own office, with a connecting doorway linking the two rooms.

  Now he sat at the head of the long polished table and spoke in conference with three of his key investors, each of them a life-sized image on the high-definition screens that filled three of the room's walls. The room was otherwise empty, except for Victoria Kessel, sitting at the foot of the table, out of the view of the three men in teleconferencing with Muncrief.

  "The baseball game is coming along extremely well," Muncrief was saying, with a big salesman's smile. His had unconsciously clasped around a nonexistent Louisville Slugger as he added, "You'll be able to play against anybody who ever appeared in the major leagues. And pi
ck your own teammates, too!"

  "The major leagues of the United States, I presume!" said Hideki Toshimura. His pinched, puffy-eyed face not smiling.

  Muncrief conceded the point with a slight dip of his chin. "It'll be a simple matter to program the players of the Japanese leagues into the game. As long as you have the statistics, we can produce the player. Imagine Sadaharu Oh socking home runs again!"

  Lars Swenson, who happened to be in Zurich at the moment, asked, "Can the program be adopted to other games? Football, for instance?"

  "Certainly, certainly," Muncrief said easily, making a mental note to check with Lowrey if that might be possible.

  "He means soccer, Kyle," said Maxwell Glass, from New York.

  "Any game you like—virtually." Muncrief laughed at his pun. The others did not.

  "May I point out," Toshimura said, "that the development effort is more than four months behind schedule? And—" he glanced down briefly, "—six and a quarter million dollars over budget."

  Muncrief brushed at the lock of hair that fell boyishly across his forehead. "Look, friends, we're talking about cutting-edge research here. Breakthroughs like you've never seen before! You can't expect these things to follow a schedule, for god's sake!"

  Swenson said, "You can't expect an unending flow of money, Muncrief."

  "We'll open Cyber World on time," Muncrief said.

  "In seven months?" Glass looked utterly unconvinced. "That's what the schedule calls for: April first."

  Squirming slightly in his chair Muncrief replied, "In seven months. That's right. The construction's already underway and—"

  "That's only brick and mortar," said Swenson.

  "And about half the games are in the can, ready to go," Muncrief continued. "This isn't like Disneyland, you know. We don't need elaborate structures and all those clanking mechanical nightmares. All we need are a few simple buildings and the electronics."

  "Half the games, you said?" Toshimura prompted.

  Ticking his fingers, Muncrief said, "We've got the Moonwalk—which can be converted to a Marswalk fast as you can blink an eye. And the undersea adventure. And the trip through the human body. And the creation of the universe!"

  "But not the baseball."

  "Not yet. Soon. Very soon." Muncrief's jaunty grin returned. "And remember, these games aren't passive. You don't just walk through the human body. You can change it! You can go right into the brain and make the body speak and move! And you haven't seen the Space Race game yet! Virtual reality is an experience; you interact with the environment you're in."

  "But the conflict games are giving you trouble," Swenson half-guessed, half-accused.

  Muncrief's grin froze on his face. "The conflict games call for two or more people to share the simulation at the same time. Naturally that's a bit more complex than a simulation where one person runs everything by himself. Or herself."

  "The conflict games will be the big attraction," said Glass. "That's the one thing cyber world will have that nobody else can do. Take part in the gunfight at the OK Corral. I was looking forward to that one myself."

  "To pitch against Babe Ruth while one's friend sees himself batting against Nolan Ryan." Toshimura's face was expressionless, but his voice had a slightly dreamy ring to it.

  Muncrief held up his hands. "The conflict games will be there, I promise you. They just need a little more time." His investors waited, and sure enough Muncrief added, "And a little more money."

  "How much more money?" Toshimura asked.

  Pushing his hair back again, Muncrief replied, "Enough to keep the team working at the problem until it's solved. That runs to roughly four-five hundred thousand a month. It's not so much."

  "For how many months?" Swenson asked.

  "Until it's perfected."

  "You want us to make an open-ended commitment?" Glass looked startled at the idea.

  Muncrief said, "I wish I could give you a schedule, but we're dealing with very creative people working at the cutting edge of the technology. Lord, they don't know how long it will take. How on earth can I know?"

  "But the conflict games must be ready when Cyber world opens!" Toshimura insisted. "Otherwise there is no point to opening the park."

  "Oh, they'll be ready by then," Muncrief promised.

  "Lord, that's seven months away."

  "Two point eight to three point five million dollars," muttered Swenson. "Call it three mil and let it go at that."

  Muncrief spread his hands and tried to smile at them.

  "After we have already invested so many millions," Toshimura said.

  "It's necessary!" Muncrief said, almost apologetically. "I told you at the outset that we'd probably need more funding. Our original budget was based on the proposition that we wouldn't hit any serious snags."

  "You're saying you've hit a serious snag?" Glass snapped, frowning.

  Muncrief put up his hands as if to shield himself from a blow. "No! Not really. It's not serious in the technical sense. It's just that we're running closer to the deadline than I thought we would and more money would allow us to put more people on the problem."

  "Three million dollars more," Toshimura repeated.

  "It's small change." Muncrief glanced from one face to another.

  "It's blackmail," said Swenson. "Or extortion, at the least."

  "It can't be done," said Glass sternly.

  Waggling one hand, Muncrief replied, "Aw, come on! We're so close to success, you can't throw in the towel now."

  "It isn't a matter of giving up, Kyle," Glass said. "You're over-budget and we're over-committed."

  "What's another three mill?" Muncrief pleaded.

  "We do not have an unending supply of funds," said Swenson. "We would have to go out and raise that three million from other sources."

  "What other sources?"

  "Sony has expressed an interest," Toshimura said. "And I am told, there has also been an expression of interest from the Disney people."

  "Oh no!" Muncrief almost leaped out of his seat. "No you don't! I didn't start this company to sell it out to Disney, goddammit! Or Sony either."

  "A partnership would make sense," Swenson said.

  "No!" Muncrief slammed a hand on the table. "No partners. I told you that when we started this venture."

  "You were not over-budget then."

  "No partners. No selling out."

  "In that case," Swenson barely suppressed a bitter smile, "no additional funding."

  "But—"

  "Kyle, you can't have your cake and eat it too," said Max Glass. "If you want the additional three million, you've got to let Disney or Sony or one of the other big boys buy into Cyber World."

  "And lose control of my own company."

  "There is an alternative," said Toshimura.

  Muncrief looked into his image on the life-sized screen, sitting in his office in Tokyo.

  "You could finish your work without additional funding," Toshimura said. "You could open Cyber World on schedule—and within the budget you now have available to you."

  Muncrief began to shake his head. "I just told you that—"

  "It's either that or open up this venture to a partnership," said Swenson.

  Muncrief looked toward Glass.

  "That's the long and short of it, Kyle. you can't have it both ways."

  Gritting his teeth, Muncrief said, "Okay. Okay. You want to play hard ball, we'll play hard ball. I'll open Cyber World on schedule—with the baseball game. If I have to lay off three-quarters of the staff here, if I have to hock my testicles, I'll get it done."

  Toshimura gave him a thin smile.

  "That's the spirit," said Glass.

  "April first," Swenson repeated.

  Once the three wall screens had gone opaque, Muncrief mopped his face with a handful of Kleenex. Victoria Kessel, who had been sitting at the far end of the conference table, unseen by the investors, arched a brow at her boss.

  "Do you really intend to hock your testicle
s?" she asked.

  "If I have to," Muncrief said, pushing his chair back from the table.

  "I've got a better solution."

  "Vickie, I've told you before, I'm not interested in a government contract."

  "We need the cushion, Kyle. We can't operate on this shoestring for much longer."

  "I don't want a government contract!" he snapped" "Take money from the blasted government and they tie you up with all their everlasting red tape."

  "This wouldn't be an ordinary kind of government procurement. It would come straight from the White House," Vickie said. "Believe me, Kyle, they don't want to get wrapped up in red tape, either."

  "Yeah, sure."

  "Kyle, they don't want anybody outside the White House to get a whiff of this. Not even the Congress. It's discretionary money, straight out of the Oval Office. Nobody will be looking over your shoulder."

  He tried to scowl at her but it didn't work.

  "They'll pay well and the work shouldn't be all that difficult. It could be the cushion you need."

  "I don't want to deal with the government," he said. Weakly.

  Vickie allowed herself to smile slightly. "Just talk to them, Kyle. It won't hurt you to talk, will it?"

  He grumbled something too low for her to hear.

  "It's either that or sell out to Disney," said Vickie. She knew that would get him to do what she wanted. Muncrief had no intention of letting any other company get its hands on ParaReality.

  Vickie was not sure that he could keep his independence. The competition was already sniffing around ParaReality, trying to make deals with some of the employees for inside information. Industrial espionage, it was called. Victoria Kessel knew all about industrial espionage. She was already involved in it.